Letter to Facebook by Ginger Keller Gannaway

I don’t (totally) mean to get all up in ya face, but you did begin on an ugly note – judging others on FACE value alone. So here goes.

Once you led teenagers and college-minded kids to follow the cool road of connections. Nowadays you are preferred by grandmas, shut-ins, and introverts. Your first followers have moved on down a more snappy,tweety road of instant gratification.

Still, the force in you is strong, but is it light or dark? You connect us across immense distances and times: to strangers and friends and long-lost relations. You can be a beacon for social goodness and you may provide millions of ways to ease our loneliness. Good stuff, for sure, EXCEPT when you give power to the bullies and the terrorists.

So. If we don’t succumb to the darkness or the FOMO feelings or the catfishing urges or plain old addiction tendencies, you do help us connect, share, like, and even grow in interesting ways.